Released in 1955, Queen Bee is a southern potboiler supreme. Joan Crawford plays Eva Phillips, a southern socialite who swoops around the Phillips family manse in knockout Jean Louis gowns psychologically terrorizing her spineless relatives until her dysfunctional family implodes. Good times in Dixie!
Eva Phillips commands the room in Jean Louis couture while her wimpy cousin and ex boyfriend look on.
The first great thing about this film is the bee hive itself. Art Director Ross Bellah and set designer Louis Diage give us an airy, high ceilinged family mansion, richly and smartly appointed, with plenty of tall windows and french doors to let in the southern light. Director Ranald McDougal and Cinematopgrapher Charles Lang (who was Oscar nominated for the film that year) photograph the house in pristine black and white with a loving care that borders on architectural fetishism. In the first scene, Eva's cousin Jennifer Stewart (played by Lucy Marlow) arrives for an ill advised extended visit, and after being let in by the butler stands in the foyer and lets the house steal the scene. A crystal chandelier softly chimes in the southern breeze. A graceful stair case rises from the center of the room, splits off and curves up to the left and to the right, like some sort of winged angel providing two routes to heaven.
A great pad in which to make out.
The next great thing is the lady herself - the former Lucille Fay LeSuer. Released in 1955, "Queen Bee" was smack dab in the middle of a decade that started with "The Damned Don't Cry" and "Harriet Craig" (which features another staircase that functions as co-star) and ends in "The Best of Everything". It is my favorite Joan Crawford decade EVER. Crawford was 45 in 1950. As we all like to tell ourselves, 40 is the new 30, etc. (I often wonder if that makes 10 the new zygote?) But in Hollywood in 1955, fifty was not the new forty. The average life expectancy for a female in the United States in 1950 was 71 (for a male it was a mere 68). The life expectancy for an average female movie star's career was about thirty. Crawford was not average. Crawford, thank goodness, refused to stop, giving us a series of star turns that have become classics. Her looks had hardened, but there are moments in this period that the camera catches her looking almost beautiful - certain closeups that capture just the right combination of light, angle and expression that give us the remnants of the softer, prettier Mildred Pierce Crawford. Then, in the next moment she stands in a doorway poised to attack a scene, and she looks very scary indeed. Her eyebrows are practically screaming their own dialogue, and seem to be leading her around. But her face has an interesting shape shifting quality during this period.
Crawford and her eyebrows, circa "Johnny Guitar".
Item number three - Fay Wray, of the original "King Kong" fame, makes a cameo at the beginning of the film, playing Sue McKinnon, the ubiquitous bonkers southern relative, who is still presentable and coherent enough to appear outside of the family attic. In the mid 1950's Wray's husband, screenwriter Robert Riskin ("Mr. Deeds Goes to Town") succumbed to a terminal illness and left her in need of funds, and after a nine year absence she went back to work in the movies. In a 1974 interview, Fay Wray said "Joan Crawford hired me for 'Queen Bee' because she like to work with older actresses. She claimed they made her look younger." According to IMDB, Crawford was born in 1905, and Wray in 1907. Fay Wray remained active in film and television into the early 1960's, and died in 2004, surviving Crawford by nearly thirty years.
Fay Wray was terrorizd by both King Kong and Joan Crawford.
The fourth great thing about "Queen Bee" is the slap. There are many great slaps in the movies, but this one I have to say took me by surprise! I was expecting yet another bullying comment from Eva Phillips, not a shot to the chops for poor Jennifer. The slap speaks for itself.
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So, to wrap it all up - this is one helluva good ride, with Barry Sullivan playing a drunkard ineffectual patriarch named Avey "Beauty" Phillips (the name "Beauty", see is a nickname because he has this scar, see, caused by a car crash, see...), Betsy Palmer as Carol Phillips, and John Ireland as Judson Prentiss.
A dog gets shot, there is a hangin' in the horse barn, and the whole mess is wrapped up with a flaming car crash. Enjoy!
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